B4U India: "Back from dead" canoeist's wife arrested in UK

"Back from dead" canoeist's wife arrested in UK
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ANI India on 10 December, 2007 07:12:00
 
By John Joseph
LONDON (Reuters) - The wife of a man who "returned from the dead" after
apparently being lost at sea in a canoeing accident five years ago has been
arrested on her return to Britain from America, police said on Sunday.
Anne Darwin, 55, was arrested on suspicion of fraud after arriving at
Manchester airport on a flight from Atlanta.
Darwin reported her 57-year-old husband John missing in 2002 when he failed to
return home after canoeing in the North Sea near their home in Hartlepool,
northeast England.
A few weeks later the shattered remains of his red kayak were discovered. A
coroner declared Darwin dead in 2003 after a police inquiry.
Newspaper reports said Anne Darwin had cashed in her husband's life insurance
policy and received his work benefits after he was declared dead.
A Manchester police spokesman told Reuters on Sunday she had been "arrested on
suspicion of fraud."
On Saturday she told British newspapers her husband had turned up at their home
a year after disappearing, and she had hidden him there for the next three
years, without telling their two sons he was alive.
They had lived in the family home, but if visitors came, John had to flee
through the false back of a wardrobe into an apartment the couple owned in the
neighbouring house, she said.
They moved to Panama, but John missed their sons and decided to return to
England, Anne said. Last week he walked into a London police station saying he
was suffering from amnesia.
On Saturday he was charged with obtaining money by deception and making a false
declaration to get a passport. He is due to appear at Hartlepool Magistrates
Court on Monday.
Anne Darwin flew from Panama to Miami, and then travelled to Atlanta from where
she returned to Britain.